Its customers might be staring at higher utility bills come Jan. 1, but residential consumers ranked PPL Electric Utilities No. 1 in satisfaction among large electric companies in the East for the fourth straight year.

That's according to the latest survey of customers by consumer research firm J.D. Power and Associates, which was released Wednesday.

Allentown-based PPL ranked first among 17 large eastern utilities, scoring 693 on a 1,000-point scale. J.D. Power's rankings are based on online surveys of residential electric customers who rated utilities on power quality and reliability, billing and payment, customer service, price, communications and corporate citizenship.

Metropolitan Edison, which like PPL Electric sells electricity in certain parts of the Lehigh Valley, came in tied for fourth among midsize power companies, with a score of 656.

Overall, utilities are doing a better job at the fundamentals, such as minimizing service interruptions and improving customer service, said John Harzen, senior director of energy practice at J.D. Power. But he also said utilities need to do better at communicating with consumers during power outages.

PPL recognizes the need to improve, while also noting in a separate news release that residential customers now receive PPL Alerts that provide outage and restoration information by phone, text or email.

"Every day brings a new opportunity to continue to work hard on behalf of our customers, to improve and deliver the best experience for customers in whatever interaction they have with us," said Chris Cardenas, vice president of customer services. "We still have more work to do, and we will continue to improve, because people depend on us to power their lives, and we deliver."

PPL has requested a $167.5 million rate hike with state regulators that would increase bills for residential customers by about $10 per month. If approved, a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month who does not shop for electricity supply would see their bill increase from $147.31 to $157.50, or 6.9 percent. Most of the company's residential customers would see smaller increases because they use less.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is expected to vote on the rate hike request by year's end.

Met-Ed's corporate owner, FirstEnergy Corp., and PPL also scored near the top in a nationwide customer satisfaction report released in May that measured reliability and rates among the nation's 25 largest investor-owned utilities.